401(k) Account shows a -$0.00 cash balance

JeremyASV

After a rebalance of securities in my 401(k) account with Empower, my cash balance shows as a negative zero (-$0.00). I have checked and re-checked the transactions and the shares/total dollars/share prices all match the transactions from the institution but it still shows as a negative. How can I fix this?

Quicken Classic Premier; Version 9.2.2 Build 902.61860.100

macOS 26.6.2

Chris_QPW

There probably isn't any way for you "fix this". If there was to be a fix it would have to come from changing the code.

Here is what is happening.

Say your cash balance came out to:

-0.000000001

And then Quicken formats it to show the number to two decimal places.

that is how you get:

-0.00

So, why would you get a cash balance that isn't exactly 0.00?

Rounding errors, especially when the fact that the computer deal in binary and humans want decimal. There are numbers that that are nice even in decimal that aren't in binary. You can see the same thing in decimal with an example like this: 1/3, in decimal is: .333333333333333333333333…

In practice the -0.00 shouldn't really cause any harm even if it does look strange.